Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Hillary's white flight

The following table shows the change in the number of white votes Hillary Clinton received in the 2016 Democrat primaries and caucuses compared to the 2008 Democrat primaries and caucuses for states where exit polling was conducting in both years (with the exception of Iowa, whose entrance polls in '08 didn't record respondent race):

State

%chng

West Virginia

-75.9

Vermont

-65.4

Mississippi

-51.4

Oklahoma

-42.0

Indiana

-36.9

Arkansas

-34.3

Pennsylvania

-31.2

North Carolina

-29.5

New York

-28.6

Florida

-27.3

Alabama

-25.5

Missouri

-25.2

Michigan

-24.4

Tennessee

-20.0

Ohio

-19.4

Maryland

-18.9

Nevada

-18.0

Massachusetts

-15.5

Wisconsin

-15.2

Connecticut

-11.6

New Hampshire

-7.1

Georgia

-3.3

Texas

-3.1

Illinois

+4.2

South Carolina

+22.1

Virginia

+25.3

Through these 26 states, Hillary has received 2.14 million fewer white votes in '16 than she did in '08. She's down in 23 states and up in just three.

Of those three, South Carolina and Illinois have easy explanations. In '08 North Carolina senator John Edwards won a plurality of the white vote. The primary occurred when there were still three electorally serious candidates in the race.

Obama had home field advantage in Illinois in '08. Even so, Hillary's white vote increase in '16 was still quite modest.

Virginia is the only state she convincingly improved her white support in from '08 to '16. Lots of federal government trough-feeding (defense) industries and contractors in the state who were afraid Sanders would cut their allotments?

From her failed run in '08 Hillary learned that winning white Democrats over doesn't matter. White Democrats won't convincingly support a candidate blacks don't. Blacks, in contrast, are monolithic and all vote for the same person. Ergo, white voters can go to hell, both in the primaries and in the general election.

This election is shaping up to be one of the most lopsided in history among whites. Given that Trump will need nearly two-thirds of the white vote to win, it can't be lopsided enough.

12 comments:

The Democrats are engaged in a positive feedback loop on increased reliance on minority/black voting over the interests of whites in the Democratic primaries and increasingly the General election..

The Democratic problem is that minorities are not a majority and if working & middle class white males outside the South toggle over to a Southern voting pattern. Democrats will be out of power for this election and for a lot of electionsa there after.

If that time sees a immigration pause applied...the Democrats will be a black owned regional/ethic party.

How about Trump's invitation to debate Bernie Sanders? He shouldn't walk it back, it's brilliant. He can use it as a stump speech opportunity rather than trying to antagonize Sanders. It'll sow further discord and disunity on the Democrat side and it'll do as much to endear Trump to disaffected Sanders' supporters as is possible.

Further examination of the May Post/ABC poll provides no solace to Clinton. In sheer numbers, Clinton has suffered her biggest losses among men, especially white men. The percentage of college-educated white men who said they would vote for her dropped an astonishing 14 points from March to May (from 47 to 33 percent); among white men without college degrees, already a problem area for her campaign, Clinton’s support also fell, from 26 to 14 percent.

That figure seems astonishingly low, even for Hillary. Reuters-Ipsos rolling five-day poll has her in the upper 20s among white men without degrees. Bad, but not quite that bad. It'll be interesting to see where the figure settles after Sanders is officially out.

Hillary Clinton is edging out Donald Trump in New Jersey, but a sizable group of voters is looking for alternatives to each major party candidate, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.

The poll, released Tuesday, found Clinton beating Trump 38%-34% if the election were held today. A sizable group (15%) also said it would vote for alternatives, including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (5%), Green Party candidate Jill Stein (4%) or some other, unnamed alternative (6%).

“Blue Jersey doesn’t appear quite so blue at this stage of the campaign, but we should keep in mind that neither major party candidate has fully locked in the support of their partisan bases.

When and if that happens, the benefit should accrue more to Clinton than to Trump simply because Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

The poll appears to lend some credence to the argument made by Johnson — who won the Libertarian nomination over the weekend — that the deep unpopularity of both Clinton and Trump makes it a opportune time for a third-party candidate. Johnson mocked Trump on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday, blowing him a kiss as he knocked the presumptive GOP nominee’s statements on immigration.